I was twenty when I discovered the truth about my father’s death wasn’t as simple as I’d been told. For fourteen years, Meredith—my adoptive mother—repeated the same explanation: it was a car accident, sudden and unavoidable. I believed her. I had no reason not to. My biological mother died the day I was born. For my first four years, it was just Dad and me. I remember pancakes on Sunday mornings, sitting on the kitchen counter while he called me his “supervisor.”
He always spoke gently about my mother, saying she would have loved me more than anything. When I was four, Meredith came into our lives. She was patient, kind, and careful with my heart. I gave her a drawing once, and she treated it like treasure. Soon after, she married my dad and adopted me. Life felt steady.
